He laughed. “Not bloody likely. Whenever possible, I shall be right here beside you, my lady.” He moved nearer as he said it. His hand rose to cup her cheek and lingered there, warm and gentle. “Do you find that thought repugnant?”
Ignoring the sensations stirred by his touch, she managed to keep a note of indignation in her voice as she told him, “I find that thought most arrogant, my lord. You seem to believe that by winning the ship, you have won the lady. It is not so. You would be wise to remember that. I am as capable as you of defending my honor.”
“In time we shall see who is the wiser or the more capable, my lady,” he said, giving her a devilish wink as he left the room and closed the door to his cabin.
A moment later Abby heard a key grate in the lock and realized that she was well and truly captured aboard a pirate ship in the Caribbean. For some reason that did not strike nearly as much terror into her heart as it ought to have.
She sensed, in fact, that in Captain Riley Walker, she had found a man of uncommon strength, tempered by an equal measure of gentleness. His spirit was wild and daring enough to equal her own, while his heart...
Well, the truth of it was that she did not yet know if his heart had the same capacity to love as her own. The prospect that it might tantalized her.
With her blood suddenly and unexpectedly running hot and wild through her veins, Abby wondered if she had at last come across, admittedly in a most uncommon manner, the man bold enough to be her match.
CHAPTER NINE
It was some time before Abby heard the grating of the key in the lock again. She must have fallen asleep, because she had no sense of the passage of time. The candle Captain Walker had left burning was down to a mere nub now, and the cabin was pitch-black. It was all too easy to imagine that loathsome Blackhearted John on the other side of the door.
As she waited for the door to swing open, her breath caught in her throat. Fear had her heart slamming against her ribs. Not until she saw the mane of blond hair and heard Riley’s whispered voice did she release that pent-up breath.
“Lady Abigail, are you asleep?”
“I am awake,” she confessed, pleased by his show of consideration.
“Then why do you sit here in darkness? There are more candles.”
“I had not thought to search for them.”
“’Twould be no search. They are beside the one I left burning,” he said as he proved it by lighting another and casting the cabin in romantic shadows. “Are you hungry, my lady? I have brought you fruit from the islands, some bread and a little wine from France. I have been saving the last bottle for a special occasion.”
For some reason she couldn’t explain, Abby’s pulse pounded at the seductive note she heard in his voice. There was a taunting, provocative air about his words that made her feel more daring than she ever recalled feeling before. To feel so about a stranger would indeed be scandalous, but Captain Walker did not seem to be a stranger at all. Perhaps it was merely his sort of arrogance she had experienced before, she decided eventually. And perhaps it was time to bring him to heel.
“You find something about this night special?” she inquired boldly.
“Aye, my lady. I do. It has been a long while since I had a beautiful woman to share my table and...”
“Do not say my bed, sir,” she said, deliberately daring to match his taunts and risk the consequences. “That would be presumptuous.”
He observed her with obvious amusement, though his eyes had darkened with what surely must be desire, the kind and depth of desire she had always dreamed some man would come to feel for her. Hot, strong, pulsing need, rather than the tepid emotions that had seemed her lot up until now.
“It would be the truth of it,” he said, “if only you would admit that you are as drawn to me as I to you.”
Abby found she was rather enjoying the unfamiliar role of coquette. She had a feeling with a little practice, she would become quite good at it. “A lady would never admit such a thing and most especially of a man she has so recently met.”
“But we do not know if in fact you are a lady, do we?” he challenged, his eyes glittering brightly.
“Perhaps not,” she conceded. “But it is most rude of you to say so.”
“True,” he acknowledged readily and without a hint of repentance. “But is it really my manners that are in question here? Or is it your fear that what I say is true and that you will fall into my arms most willingly?”
Abby could not help grinning at his bold arrogance. She turned away to hide her smile...and to keep him from guessing the accuracy of his assessment. It was true. Something deep inside her had stirred to life the moment she had laid eyes on him.
If the Earl of Wilton had promised fulfillment of her desire for adventure—even if he had reneged on that promise—then this equally bold Riley Walker of the Sea Witch was surely tempting her in other, far more mysterious and intriguing ways.
In the blink of an eye a passion she had not known she possessed had awakened, a passion that was deeper and more complex than even those magnificent feelings she had shared with the earl. She might not have yearned to
